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Irish Banks and Budgets Continue to Be a Liability

Tuesday was one of those days in Ireland that a happenstance of news events helped illustrate the horribly entangled nature of the country’s economic and banking crises.

Ireland’s new Budget minister Brendan Howlin, appointed to a newly-created ministry in the new coalition government last month, was telling the nation that Ireland is “in a dreadful bind” and the government needs a stringent budgetary process.

He was speaking before a series of further meetings with the country’s European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders for a review of Irish government finances.